She was never the loudest. Never the flashiest. No neon hair dye. No catchphrases screamed into the void. But make no mistake—Rita Reis, the woman once known as Valentina Feroz, has been cutting her way through this business like a straight razor through silk.
Born on July 18, 1995, in Brazil—where fire and faith often mix in the same breath—Reis was raised on the kind of discipline you don’t learn on TikTok. She cut her teeth on the judoka mat, where technique matters more than tattoos and nobody cares how many followers you have if you can’t stay on your feet. And that’s where she learned to fight—not perform, not posture—fight.
Before the glitz, before the pyro, there was a mat, a belt, and a thousand breakfalls that turned her into something solid. You want to know what made Valentina Feroz dangerous? It wasn’t the smile. It wasn’t the ring gear. It was that quiet confidence—the kind that comes from knowing you can break someone’s rhythm with a hip toss and a whisper.
She tried out for WWE in Santiago, Chile in 2018. You know what you need to do to impress those guys when you’re 5’2″, Brazilian, and not bred in the Stamford machine? Everything. And she did. They signed her in 2019, right around the time most indie darlings were still fumbling through headlocks on gym mats.
She debuted in NXT during a 2020 battle royal, tossed out by Raquel Gonzalez. Blink and you missed her. That was the rhythm of her early WWE days—a series of blink-and-miss moments strung together like bad diner coffee and bar tab regrets. She wasn’t the chosen one. She was the one picking herself up, again and again, in the shadow of women with better lighting and louder entrances.
Then came the name—Valentina Feroz—and a taste of identity. It wasn’t Rita anymore. It was a persona built in the cracks of creative indifference. But damn if she didn’t make it work.
She teamed with Yulisa Leon, a pairing that looked like a Hallmark commercial on paper but had enough chemistry in the ring to rattle the rafters. They lost a lot, sure. But that wasn’t the point. In WWE, you learn early that losing isn’t always losing—sometimes it’s auditioning. Feroz and Leon took every match like a test, and Valentina passed with callused grace.
They bounced from 205 Live to SmackDown to NXT Level Up, carving out a sliver of relevance in a company that eats hope for breakfast. She never got the rocket push. Never got the big moment. But she was there, every week, putting in the kind of work that makes agents nod silently and marks look up her name on Reddit.
Her biggest spotlight came at The Great American Bash in 2023, in an eight-person mixed tag where she teamed with Dragon Lee, Nathan Frazer, and Leon. And for once, the universe tilted in her favor. They won. And for a brief, glimmering second, Valentina Feroz wasn’t background noise—she was the pulse.
But wrestling is a business written in pencil, and the eraser’s always in motion. Yulisa Leon got cut in September. Feroz was back to being a solo act. One final match on NXT Level Up, a win over Amari Miller, and then… silence. Five months of limbo. Five months of waiting for the call that finally came in May 2024:
“You’re released.”
No dramatic sendoff. No farewell promo. Just another name on the weekly list. Another soul fed to the algorithm. WWE had no more use for her. But she wasn’t done—not even close.
Rita Reis hit the independent scene like a woman unchained. She picked up the KAOZ Women’s Championship in Mexico and didn’t look back. She’s now wrestling in Women of Wrestling as Gabriella Cruz—a name that sounds like it belongs in a telenovela but hits like a freight train.
She’s found new life in a promotion that lets her stretch her limbs and her lungs. In WOW, she isn’t booked to lose in two minutes. She’s booked to make you feel something. And that’s dangerous—because if there’s one thing Rita Reis has always done better than most, it’s make you feel the fight. The struggle. The unglamorous, beautiful brutality of this business.
And yet, through all of it—the falls, the false finishes, the forgettable bookings—she never quit. Never complained. You won’t find her sobbing on a podcast or writing an exposé on creative dysfunction. She just kept walking forward, bootprints in the mud, another town, another show.
She got married on New Year’s Eve 2023, the kind of night most wrestlers spend nursing a twisted knee or faking charisma in a rented tux. Not Rita. She said “I do” with the same resolve she’s said “I’m ready” a thousand times before walking through a curtain into a world that rarely welcomed her with open arms.
Valentina Feroz may be gone from WWE, but Rita Reis—the judoka, the champion, the bruised poet in kickpads—she’s still fighting. Still evolving. And Gabriella Cruz? She’s just the next chapter in a story that refuses to fade into the midcard of history.
She doesn’t scream.
She doesn’t dance.
She fights.
And if you’re not paying attention, don’t worry—she’ll remind you.
With a takedown.
With a smile.
With a name you won’t forget the second time.